


Blondeau in umbris inquietari

by Oilan



Series: Ghost AU [3]
Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Afterlife, Canon Era, Gen, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:54:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27308773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oilan/pseuds/Oilan
Summary: Alone in his office, Blondeau senses a presence
Series: Ghost AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1174133
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	Blondeau in umbris inquietari

Mid-June 1832

At the end of a long day, Blondeau threw open his office door, grumbling to himself as he dropped a stack of class rosters and papers onto his desk. His back was stiff, his bones ached, and to cap it off he had a great number of essays to mark -- a great amount of idiocy to slog through before he could retire for the evening. One would think he would be used to it by now. Year after year, class after class of students, all laughing, talking, and cheerfully skipping their lessons.

But then, he thought, with a modicum of bitter satisfaction, at least the last point afforded some solace. The more students were absent, the more he could cross off the roll -- and in the last few weeks, he had had a veritable spree of erasures. It was not the first time this had happened, nor would it be the last. A riot always weeded out the more troublesome young men, the ones that would never have amounted to anything, did nothing but waste their parents' funds and kick up trouble in the street. Blondeau snorted, and then set about writing a new roll before tackling the essays. The list of names had shortened considerably.

He worked in silence for a while, starting on the essays after setting aside the roll -- and then he shivered. At the same time, he heard a faint laugh from behind his chair, breaking him out of his reverie. He looked over his shoulder to see the curtains blowing in a faint breeze. The window must have been open -- he realized, suddenly, how unseasonably cold it was for mid-June -- and there must have been some young degenerate making noise in the street below. He set his pen in the inkwell, rose and shuffled forward -- and stopped in his tracks.

The window was shut.

In front of his eyes, the curtains stopped moving and hung limply in an eerie stillness. Frowning deeply, he crossed over to them to check for any drafts -- perhaps the seal of the window was poor -- but found none. Nor could he discern, as he peered outside, anyone at all standing in the street below.

Perhaps it was too dark to see them. Blondeau pressed his face to the glass, but then there was a clatter behind him. He turned as quickly as he could and was surprised to find his pen laying flat on the desk, far away from the inkwell in which it had stood. As he watched, the pen rolled across the wooden surface and clattered to the floor.

The essays could wait, he decided. Without bothering to gather his belongings, he extinguished the lamps and left the room.

* * *

Blondeau was not a man to ever chide himself for anything, but he came close the following day.

_What rubbish,_ he thought as he made his way down the corridor of the law school the following morning. Everything that occurred the previous evening was perfectly explainable. The world operated under certain unchanging rules. He would always wake for work much too early. The omnibus would always be late, the students would always shirk their work, and there were no such thing as-

He could not even bring himself to think it. Foolish notion. A pen had fallen to the floor. That was all.

Still, he paused on the threshold to his office. Everything was as he had left it the previous day, aside from the pen. More alarmed than he would have liked to admit, he scanned the room before spotting it lying on the desk next to the ink well.

Someone must have been by to speak with him after he had left and replaced it, nothing more. He gave a derisive snort, and started work on the essays he had neglected the previous day.

After a quarter-hour or so, Blondeau relaxed a bit. He had been tired yesterday. Perhaps he had imagined it all, though he strongly disapproved of imagination.

He crumpled up several papers by now-deceased students -- he would not bother grading these, though he was a little surprised they had bothered turning them in at all. Invariably, the types of students to die in some insurrection were not the type to hand in their homework. This thought crossed his mind and then, as if on cue, a freezing cold touched the back of his neck.

_“He’s not grading it? I worked hard on that! I was feeling poetic and wrote a ballad -- Ode to Blondeau's Earhair. I was looking forward to seeing his reaction."_

_"Unlucky as ever."_

_“Shh!”_

Blondeau whipped around. He could not have imagined it — three separate voices, somehow sounding as though they were coming from directly behind his head and from very far away.

“Who’s there?” he demanded.

Silence. He listened intently, but could hear no more. The curtains moved slightly.

"There's someone here! I heard you! Come out and show yourself!"

Nothing.

Blondeau's eyes darted around, looking for any hiding place. Someone was here playing a trick on him, and he was going to find them. He was going to catch them and see to it they were expelled -- or worse.

The office was small, but there were still a few nooks a determined student might have squeezed themselves into. He tore back the curtains, kicked aside boxes of old papers, finally ripping open the storage cabinet, but found absolutely no trace of anyone there with him. He was completely alone. Slowly, he turned back to the center of the room and stared.

He felt eyes -- not just one pair, but several -- looking at him, invisible, waiting to see what he would do next. His heart pounded in his ears.

"I'm going to class," Blondeau announced to the empty office. He listened. The office was silent, but with that particular type of silence that comes only from students struggling to hold back laughter.

He suppressed a shudder, and left for the lecture hall.

* * *

He did not return to his office until the end of the day -- by circumstances outside his control, he told himself. Why, he had barely any time for a midday meal, much less an opportunity to laze away in front of his desk. After the last class had finished for the day, however, he could put it off no longer.

The office door was closed. Hadn't he left it open earlier? Moreover, he could hear something inside the room -- he frowned, and approached the door as quietly as he could, listening hard. There were voices! Voices, coming from behind the door.

Blondeau held his breath, trying to discern what was being said.

_"We're being too subtle!"_ said one voice. _"Little drafts and pens moving -- bah! If we are haunting him, let us do something big!"_

_"We can only do so much, considering,_ " a second voice said, in a slight Provençal accent. _"Besides, we wouldn't want him to die of fright and join us. Then we'd never be rid of him."_

_"Perhaps,"_ a third voice said, solemn but with a strange melodic quality. _"This sort of thing is unworthy of our time."_

_"Nonsense!"_ said the second voice. _"It is what ghosts do, isn't it?"_

_"I think I have an idea,"_ said a fourth, tinged with laughter. _"Let me take care of this!"_

The voices were familiar to him, now that he was listening carefully. But it couldn't be -- not after the _émeute_.

As quickly as he could, Blondeau threw open the door, ready to catch anyone that might be behind it. Still, the office was empty.

He stood in the doorway for a long while, eyes darting back and forth, ears pricked for any sound, but he could discern nothing out of the ordinary. Not a thing was out of place, though he once again felt that odd sensation of several pairs of eyes upon him. Blondeau glared right back. If there was something -- an unseen presence, however much he hated the notion -- hanging about his office, he refused to give it the satisfaction of fear.

"I'm not afraid of you!" he cried, berating himself at the tremor in his voice. The silence around the room took on a skeptical sort of quality.

Though his heart was hammering in his chest, Blondeau turned his back on it and sat at his desk, taking up his pen again. Just a few more papers to mark, and he could go home. He made to pull the stack of essays towards himself, but experienced another shock to find them gone. In their place were two papers -- his latest class roster, and the essay he had crumpled up and tossed away yesterday. The latter had been unfolded and laid flat at the center of his desk.

Slowly, knowing exactly what he would find when he saw it, he trailed his gaze up the page until it rested at the name scribbled messily at the top: _Lesgle_.

Blondeau gaped at it, his mind working to think of anything, _anything_ that could explain away its reappearance, but before he could form a single thought, a sudden and biting cold gripped him. To his utmost horror, the pen was jerked from his hand and hovered for a moment before coming down hard on the roster, splattering ink. It began to write with slow and deliberate movements:

_BLONDEAU NASICA_

The handwriting -- the handwriting matched that of the essay exactly. Blondeau barely had time to register this fact before the pen came down again, so hard the nib of it splintered, and drew one quick line over the writing, crossing it out with what could only be described as relish.

That was the end of it -- Blondeau yelled and wrenched himself away from the desk. Forgetting everything behind him -- hat, coat, and walking stick -- he hobbled away as fast as his stiff legs could carry him, out the door and down the hall, swearing, screaming, and all the time chased by peals of loud and horribly familiar laughter.


End file.
